


Backstreet Boys Need Not Apply

by Kacka



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-19 09:35:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7355599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kacka/pseuds/Kacka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke's mom is moving, which means she needs to sort through the stuff in her old room and decide what to keep. She enlists Bellamy to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Backstreet Boys Need Not Apply

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a while. Part of my aforementioned family stuff includes moving, which turned out to be a bigger task than I thought. No promises about if/when I'll be able to post again but I'd like to get back to some kind of consistency.

“This is by far the worst part about my mother getting remarried,” Clarke grumbles, heaving another box into her arms and starting down the stairs.

She’s been holed up in her childhood bedroom for the better part of the morning, tossing her belongings into garbage bags and cardboard boxes to either throw out or store somewhere in her mom’s new attic. Abby is at the newer, smaller house that she and Marcus purchased together, moving the last of her own things. Clarke would have been packing– if you can call it that– on her own if it weren’t for the way she’d bribed Bellamy to help her.

“Isn’t that a good thing?” He huffs, adjusting his grip on a box of her books. “I mean, it could be worse, right? You could hate Marcus, or she could be making you wear some kind of tulle monstrosity with, like, sequins and puffy sleeves.”

“Yeah, an ugly bridesmaid dress is pretty much the worst-case scenario,” Clarke says dryly. “But seriously, I’m never moving ever again.”

“I second that motion.”

She collapses next to him where he’s leaning against the tailgate of Lincoln’s truck, slumping until she’s leaning fully against his shoulder. It’s her natural inclination to be physically touching Bellamy as often as possible. He’s very– solid. It’s comforting.

He never seems to mind, especially given that he’s equally tactile with all their friends. She’s not, really. She’s pretty partial to Bellamy over almost anyone else.

“Did I mention how you’re my hero?”

He hums in mock thought. “No, but you did mention as much pizza as I can eat and unfettered access to any and all embarrassing mementos.”

“And I stand by my word.”

“How much more is there?” He sighs, looking despairingly at the limited empty space in the bed of the truck.

“All that’s left is a couple of boxes in my closet. I think it’s just stuff from elementary school. Report cards, art projects, yearbooks.”

“So basically the blackmail jackpot.”

“Basically, yeah.”

He helps her lift the boxes down from the top shelf in her closet, teasing her about how she needs to bench more. She tries to come up with something to say that covers her less-than-subtle appreciation of the product of his time at the gym. His arms are unreal.

“Oh, this is gold already.” He grins at her, wide and unrestrained, lifting out the framed school photos that sit in the top of the first box. “Look at your hair!”

She blinks, trying to get past the brightness of his smile and the way he looked up at her through his shaggy, too-long hair.

“The straight-across bangs were not my best look. Zooey Deschanel makes them seem easy but they’re clearly not for everyone.”

“The gap in your teeth is like a mile wide.”

“It’s a miracle what braces will do.”

“You were cute,” he says absently, still smiling as he studies the pictures. Her stupid heart does _not_ twinge at that.

“I peaked too soon.”

“Shut up, you’re still cute and you know it. Are these supposed to be dogs?” He holds up some construction paper with magic marker scribbles on them.

“Hell if I know. As far as I can tell, they’re Rorschach inkblots,” she laughs. “You can toss those. Any artwork worth saving from my childhood we hung up in my dad’s study.”

He doesn’t say anything in response and when she looks up at him questioningly, he’s watching her with soft eyes.

“Is it– Are you okay?” He asks tentatively. “Leaving this house when it’s got all these memories of your dad? I know you joked about this being hard, but–”

“I’m not in crisis mode.” Clarke smiles gently. “I don’t blame my mom or Marcus for not wanting to live here together. I’m honestly surprised she stayed here this long. I want her to be happy.”

“Wow, that was so mature. Didn’t know you had it in you.”

“Shut up,” she says, kicking him. “I probably don’t need to save my pet rocks, do I?”

“Pet rocks? How lonely were you as a child?”

“I had a very vivid imagination,” she says primly, studying the various pebbles and pieces of gravel she’d painted and then glued googly eyes onto. “And my mom is allergic to dander.”

“So get a fish, a lizard, a parrot. You probably could have even afforded a pony if you’d wanted one.”

“I had a turtle, but he died. It traumatized me too much to be able to convince my parents to let me get any other pets. Actually, I probably still have–” She roots around in the box, coming up triumphant with a note written in sparkly gel pen on black paper. It had seemed somber at the time.

“I was a little afraid you were going to unearth a turtle corpse.”

“No, it’s his eulogy.”

“This I’ve gotta see,” he says, scooting closer so he can read over her shoulder. They take turns reading aloud until they have to stop because they’re both laughing too hard, his head buried in her shoulder, her sides aching.

“You can’t say I didn’t try to give him a little dignity.”

“I’m sure he appreciates your efforts from the big pond in the sky, or wherever turtles go when they die.”

Clarke is suddenly very aware of how close he is, how she can smell his aftershave, can feel when his chest rises and falls with his breathing. She clears her throat.

“What else?” She asks, missing him as soon as he moves back to his box. It’s becoming increasingly apparent that she’s much further gone for him than she knew. She’s going to have to talk to him about it at some point, before she climbs so high the fall would crush her.

They find a stack of photos: Clarke and Wells as babies, drooling on every surface imaginable; her Halloween costumes over the years, ranging from a halfhearted Princess Potato Head to an awkward mad scientist; professional portraits from the one and only ballet recital she performed in; silly faces and bad fashion choices and awkward pre-puberty moments, all captured on film.

“Score,” Bellamy says with enough glee in his tone to make Clarke look up from a book full of Disney character signatures. “I got a diary.”

“I don’t even recognize that.”

“Uh huh. Sure you don’t.”

“No, really,” she shrugs. “Don’t get too excited. I probably wrote in it once or twice, thinking I would become the kind of person who journals, and then never touched it again.”

“I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?” Bellamy flips through the pages. “Yeah, it looks like there’s about a week’s worth of entries.”

“I’m impressed I made it that long.”

“Apparently you were stuck in another state for some relative’s wedding. It’s probably boredom, not self-discipline. Sorry to disappoint.” Clarke untangles some mardi gras beads and a lanyard from her first summer away at camp as Bellamy speed-reads the diary, looking for juicy entries.

“Anything good?” She asks, after the silence has stretched on longer than she expected. “I’m sure I was wise and insightful as a child.”

“You didn’t think much of the wedding ceremony,” he says, and his tone sounds– off. Somehow. “It’s described here as ‘too fancy with bad food.’”

“That’s pretty much how I feel about a lot of weddings these days.” He doesn’t laugh and concern starts to nag at her. “What else?”

“Hmm?”

“What else did you find in there?”

“Well, you go on to say that you just think she’s getting married because she’s afraid of being too old. It’s something you overheard her talking about.”

Clarke vaguely recalls the wedding in question. She remembers thinking the bride and groom looked more like cardboard cutouts than like actual people. Her adult self would describe the wedding as perfunctory. Still, she doesn’t know why it’s getting to Bellamy.

“And you’re freaking out now that my eight-year-old self would think you’re too old to still be single?” She prompts, frowning.

“I’m not freaking out.”

“You’re being weird.”

He’s quiet for a beat.

“You made a list here of what kind of person you’d want to marry.” He turns the journal around and hands it to her, and she’s slightly more worried than before as she takes it from him. She’s not sure where this is going, but it could be headed in a dangerous direction.

She’d titled the page, _My Husband_ , because this was before she’d known she’d like girls too.

“Can show me where constellations are,” she reads, starting at the top of the list. “I have no idea why that’s the number one qualification for my future spouse but it probably has something to do with the time I went camping with my girl scout troop and couldn’t find the big dipper. I was humiliated.”

“It’s a significant character trait,” Bellamy says, but his voice sounds like he’s trying really hard to keep it even. She gives him an appraising look but he motions for her to continue.

“Must like *NSYNC more than Backstreet Boys. But then I scratched that out and wrote, ‘Can like what he wants but must listen to *NSYNC with me.’ Good to know I was at least marginally reasonable. Though honestly, if they like Backstreet Boys more, they’re just plain wrong.” She looks up at him. “You’ll back me up on that, right?”

“I would classify myself as ‘under duress’ when I listened to O’s music, but between the two I hated *NSYNC less.”

“I’ll take it.” Her eyes drop to the paper again. “The next one is underlined: ‘Must be a good kisser.’ And then in parentheses I wrote, ‘VERY IMPORTANT,’ in all caps.”

“Clearly you had your priorities straight.”

“Yeah. Constellations, *NSYNC, kissing. In that order. I knew what I was about. Next we have, ‘Must be taller than me,’ and then an arrow, and then I wrote, ‘Sorry Wells.’” She bursts into laughter. “I’ve got to send him a picture of this later. Remind me.”

“It’s hard to imagine he was ever smaller than you.”

“He got his growth spurt late,” Clarke muses. “And he didn’t really bulk up until he went out for the football team junior year of high school. Oh, the next one is good: ‘Must have a dog.’ I’m telling you, losing my turtle affected me deeply.”

“Keep going.”

“‘Must make me laugh at least three times a day’. That’s really specific. ‘Must make good mac n’ cheese.’ Oh, that used to be such a big deal to me. I hated all my babysitters unless they could fix a box of Kraft. Like it’s hard. ‘Must clean up after me.’ Yikes.” She shakes her head, dread settling in the pit of her stomach. She’s beginning to understand why Bellamy is acting so weirdly.

It’s basically a list that describes him.

Whenever he’s walking her home from the bar late at night, he’ll look up and, with the arm not looped around her shoulders, point out whatever constellations he can find in his varying states of sobriety. He’ll bicker about her choice of music but almost always relinquish the playlist to her preferences. Half the reason she spends so much time at his place is because of Cerberus, a mutt she helped him adopt a few years back. He always makes her favorite foods when she’s too hungover or stressed or busy to cook for herself, he makes her laugh, he almost compulsively straightens the messy piles she leaves all over her place. He’s even taller than she is, though that’s not so much of a deal breaker these days.

If she was waiting for the perfect moment to present itself, she really couldn’t hope for one much better than this. Sure, she hasn’t had as much time as she’d like to steel herself for the possibility of heartbreak, but if she chickens out now, she’s not sure she’ll ever do it.

And she doesn’t really think she’d lose Bellamy. At worst, things would be awkward between them. Much like they already are, thanks to eight-year-old Clarke.

“It’s a little eerie, how well I knew myself,” she says when she can speak again.

“Yeah?” He asks, overly casual. He’s not quite meeting her eye and she feels bad when it sets her more at ease, knowing he’s nervous too. “That still what you’re looking for?”

“Yes and no.” His face freezes, like he doesn’t know whether to be optimistic or crushed. “I still think these are all good qualities, but they’re not necessarily the deciding factors anymore.”

“What are the factors now?”

Clarke bites her lip. As certain as she suddenly is, she’s still– She could be wrong. But she also could be right, and the reward is worth the risk.

“My mom told me once that I should marry my best friend, so that’s my current plan.” Bellamy’s head snaps up and she can feel a blush rising in her cheeks as his eyes dart across her face, like they can’t decide where to settle. “I guess I’m lucky that he basically checks off every box. Except, well, I guess I’m not sure yet about the good kisser part.”

He wets his lips.

“One way to find out.”

She’s no further than arm’s length from him, as is her preferred state of being, so it’s easy for her to lean across and tangle his hand with hers as their lips fit together perfectly. He lets her control it, keeping mostly still until she squeezes his hand and goes, “ _Bell._ ”

He laughs a little and pulls her closer, until she’s mostly in his lap, changing the angle of the kiss so he can deepen it. And then they’re making out on the floor of her childhood bedroom, surrounded by the artifacts of her elementary school days. It’s not what she imagined, but his hair is soft between her fingers and he’s so _sure_ as he kisses her, she has to admit it’s better than her imagination.

“What’s the verdict?” He asks, nosing her temple when he starts grinning too much to keep up the kiss. “Do I make the cut? Check off every box on the list?”

“If you didn’t, I’d just rewrite the list.”

At this, he drags her mouth back to his. It’s messier and it’s _more_ , the slide of his tongue promising things to come. It makes her head spin.

“So did you just propose?” He asks, lips moving against her jaw. “Is that what just happened?”

“I think we should date first,” Clarke says fairly, smiling and playing with his curls when he drops his head to her shoulder. “You know, see how it goes. But eventually, yeah. I’m probably gonna marry you.”

He exhales shakily, a mixture of relief and incredulity.

“Awesome.”

 

* * *

 

“I thought we agreed I was never moving again,” Clarke sighs, forlorn as she stares at the sea of boxes stacked in her living room. Bellamy wraps an arm around her waist and tugs her in so he can smack a kiss against her hair.

“Yeah, but we don’t already live together, so one of us was going to have to move and the other one was going to have to help. Is this all your stuff? I was expecting more.”

“I still need to box up the last of it. You want to take my desk, and I’ll finish my bedroom?”

“Sure thing.”

She’s weirdly calm as she folds her pajamas and packs up her toiletries. Even when he wanders slowly into the doorway, eyes glued to the page in front of him, she doesn’t feel nervous so much as fond. He’s going to say yes. He has to. He basically said yes the first time.

“You rewrote the list,” he says, surprise still settled on his face as his eyes meet hers. “You added things.”

“Do you want me to get down on one knee?”

He grins and sets the journal down so he can settle his hands on her hips.

“No, but I want to hear you say it.”

“Make me do all the hard work,” Clarke teases. “Bellamy Blake, for all the reasons listed on that paper and more, will you marry me?”

Instead of answering he kisses her, which is kind of an answer in and of itself.

“Yeah, I’ll marry you. I don’t have a ring. Yet.”

“That’s okay. I’ve still got some pretty compelling reasons to go through with it. I even wrote them down.”

“In case you ever forget what you’re looking for in a partner,” he teases.

“I'm not looking anymore,” she corrects him, playing with the curls at the base of his neck. “I've found it."

The expression on his face is goofy and she’s certain hers matches it exactly. It's still a little surreal sometimes, to realize what she has. What she thought she might not get. What she's wanted, apparently, since she was eight.

"I like the sound of that," he says, fingers slipping under the hem of her shirt to trace the skin at her waist. Now that he knows he's allowed to touch her, he's become a lot more tactile than when they were platonic friends. It's one of her favorite things.

"Yeah," she agrees, resting her head on his shoulder. "Me too."

 


End file.
